Civil 3D: One Key Survey Command

Entering property boundary from a deed or just typing a traverse using bearing and distance command is very common in the survey world. While Civil 3D has had tools that enable coordinate geometry entry, there was room for improvement.

The new coordinate geometry tool displays rich temporary graphics for bearing and distances and gives you a feedback as you enter the information. It has a very intuitive and easy interface that hopes to simplify manual entry of coordinates with minimal learning curve.

As you can see from the figure below, labels on the traverse are temporary and will go away when the COGO editor is closed. The temporary graphics are not affected by the AutoCAD regen command. You can read the traverse from an existing polyline or enter the whole traverse manually by typing in the bearing and distances. There are two different tabs for data entry and traverse balancing.

In addition, you can do mathematical calculations/equations within the cells for bearing and distance calculations, grid to ground conversions, etc. To learn more click here.

This powerful tool is part of the Civil 3D 2016 Productivity pack. You can get this and other tools by downloading and installing the productivity pack from your Autodesk account. Once installed it can be accessed from the Toolbox tab or Toolspace.

For more information on the software solutions, training and consulting Ideate provides, please visit the Ideate, Inc. homepage.

Gaurav Bagga

Gaurav Bagga
Senior Application Specialist Infrastructure

Gaurav is a Senior Application Specialist for Infrastructure Solutions at Ideate based out of San Francisco. He has over 18 years of experience in construction and related software industry. With this extensive design technology background he helps engineering and surveying companies, federal and state government agencies, and ENR 500 firms critically analyze and improve their construction drawing production process. He implements Civil infrastructure design technology led by InfraWorks and Civil 3D and has helped Ideate grow Civil Infrastructure Services. Being an industry recognized speaker he has presented cutting edge design technology at several industry conferences such as Autodesk University. Find Gaurav on Twitter.